Welcome to the Education Blog

Welcome to the Cisco Education Blog. We’ll be using this blog to share our vision and solutions for Connected Learning. We’ll also showcase the success that education leaders are having creating 21st Century learning environments for students in schools, colleges and universities all around the world. More importantly, we’ll use the blog to listen, so please be generous with your comments and feedback.

Cisco has a great story to tell in Education. This story emanates from our Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, who firmly believes that there are two great equalizers in society – the Internet and Education. He also has outlined a long term vision for Cisco to be the best in the world and the best for the world.

As a result, Cisco’s approach to education is comprehensive and multi-faceted. We have groups across all of Cisco that are actively engaging with Education leaders to improve education everywhere. At the core of these engagements, is our fundamental belief that the network can serve as a platform for education innovation that can dramatically improve educational outcomes for students.

One of the ways we showcase innovative and practical solutions for today’s education challenges is the Cisco Virtual Forum for Education Leaders. This online Forum is filled with informative presentations and resources that demonstrate the success that dedicated educators are having meeting today’s education challenges. The Forum features the following keynote speakers:

Getting the Best Out of Professional Development
Gay Krause, Founder, Krause Center for Innovation

There are also separate tracks for Primary/Secondary Schools, Community/Vocational Colleges and 4 year universities. We encourage you to register and login to the Virtual Forum. We’re confident you will be inspired by these innovative educators.

Thanks for visiting the Cisco Education Blog. We’ll be broadening the Cisco Education Blogging Team, so we hope you’ll return for their insights and reflections. We look forward to your comments and feedback.

As an educator who makes extensive use of the Internet as a teaching tool/platform, I agree that there is an inextricable relation between Internet technology and education. However, I completely disagree with the notion that either functions as the 'great equaliser' of our time. If anything, they have widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots and have, undoubtedly, placed the less tech-savvy older generation of educators and adult learners at a disadvantage. The Digital Divide is alive and kicking - it is not a myth. Without even going into the percentage of developing world nationals who have access to either, versus the first world nationals who have access to both, just take a look at the United States and the United Kingdom. Are education opportunities equals for all classes in either of these countries or do all in either have equal access to technology, let alone education technology in schools? Therefore, education technologies have empowered the already empowered and marginalised the already marginalised. It is, therefore, imperative to find a way to equalise access and, while at it, engage in the retraining of the older generation of educators in the use of education technology and their implementation in their classrooms.
To date, technology and education are only potential equalisers and it is imperative that a strategy be formulated and implemented for their transformation into real, rather than potential, equalisers.
Regards,
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